Abstract: In this paper, I describe my Washington experiences
as a computer science professor on leave as a program manager at the Advanced
Research Projects Agency during the first two years of the Clinton-Gore
Administration. I arrived in January 1993, just a few weeks before President
Clinton's inauguration, and departed in December 1994, as the new Republican
Congress, and its Contract with America, took the reins of government.
A young and vigorous administration arrived with grand visions of how information
technology could transform society. Newspapers were filled with headlines
about the high tech White House and its plans for the Information Superhighway.
Information technology lay at the heart of its bold proposals to reinvent
and reengineer government. It was the dawn of a new age. Enlightened technocrats
would govern in harmony with a new kind of utopian participatory democracy,
made possible by advanced communications technologies. What better place
to observe it all than from the seat of technocracy in the government: the
Advanced Research Projects Agency?
Here, almost three years later, this technology agenda is a shambles. The
Administration's own telecommunications reforms have failed. Alternative
proposals, as likely to foster megamergers as to increase competition, are
making their way through Congress under Republican sponsorship. The administration's
cryptography policy remains in disarray [NY Times 95c]. I hope that this
paper will give the reader some insights as to why this happened.
Nevertheless, my two years in Washington were the experience of a lifetime.
(Click here and here to
see my official presidential "presentation" key chain; as Napolean said,
"With such baubles, men are led").
I helped launch the National Information Infrastructure initiative, put
the White House on the Internet, established e-mail accounts for the President
and Vice President, participated in Vice President's National Performance
Review, and generally had the opportunity to observe many of the leaders
of the administration up close and personal. This is the story of what I
saw.
Key Words and Phrases: Science and Technology Policy; National Information
Infrastructure; National Performance Review
